A ‘solution’ that reaffirms the problem

The proposal by the Uttar Pradesh Women’s Commission to bar men from taking women’s measurements in tailoring shops and training them in gyms is a retrograde move. It also covers beauty parlours where male employees cut women’s hair and yoga centres that have male trainers. The panel wants only women as teachers or security guards in school buses. The purported objective of the move is to prevent “bad touch” and curb the “ill intentions” of men. Babita Chauhan, the Commission’s chairperson, has said that the move will help more women get employment. Setting apart exclusive areas for women to live or work, and to engage in their personal and social needs, amounts to banishing them from social life. It will also lead to a loss of the gains women have made in the exercise of their rights.

The idea, if implemented, may be extended to other areas. It could also set off demands that women athletes should only be trained by women coaches or that armed forces and other areas where men dominate should not have women or their presence should be limited to exclusive areas of work. This arises from a faulty idea of women’s safety and of their place in society. Ensuring women’s safety by keeping them away from men is a fundamentally flawed idea. It is an artificially created safety that denies both men and women their natural right to live together in society. The proposal discriminates against men by restricting their options to work but it hurts women more because they are already oppressed and discriminated against in many ways in a society that favours men. Only the sense of safety that women feel in a natural environment is real, and it is the society’s collective responsibility to ensure that. Women should feel they are equal members of an inclusive society and only that will give them the strength and confidence to deal with the challenges and threats to their safety. Society’s laws and practices should help them in this shift.

Women should be encouraged to take up professions which men dominate now such as coaching or careers in the armed forces. But their freedom to choose what they want to do and where they want to avail a service is non-negotiable. It is patriarchal, and paternalistic, to segregate male and female areas of life and work; it is part of an attitude toward women that fundamentalist religious ideologies entertain and try to practise. It is also disappointing to note that the proposal has come from a panel constituted to address women’s issues.